Researchers decode early Bell recordings

This past Tuesday, the Library of Congress
teamed up with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to decode
early recordings made by Alexander Graham Bell and others from the
1880s. It is believed that this is the first time these recordings
were played in nearly 130 years.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Scientist Carl Haber shows the frequencies of the sound recorded in
1885 by Alexander Graham Bell at Volta Laboratory during a news
conference at the Library of Congress in Washington. (Via: AP
Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Many of these recordings, long stored at the
Smithsonian, are considered very, very fragile. Until this
technology became available, it had not been possible to listen to
them without damaging the discs or cylinders.

First, some background

In the 1880s, Bell was part of a growing group
of scientists trying to be the first to record sound. The
scientists were using anything they could find, whether it was
glass, rubber, or metal. With each success, Bell, along with other
innovators of the time like Emile Berliner and Thomas Edison, left
objects and documentation with the Smithsonian to prove their
innovations were first.

While Edison’s earliest recordings are
believed to be lost, Bell took extra precaution and sealed some of
his devices in tin boxes for safe keeping. As a result,
approximately 200 experimental records of his were safely packed
away with the Smithsonian, seemingly never be played again.

The technology that the Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory developed reads the sound from tiny grooves in
the material using light and a 3D camera. Software then creates a
high-resolution digital map of the disc or cylinder, which is next
processed to remove scratches and skips. A program then takes the
map and reproduces the audio content into a standard digital sound
file.

Recordings were made on cylinders and discs of
several different designs. The sounds captured include a collection
of recited verse, man-made sound effects, and basic spoken
information.

“To be or not to be...” a
man’s voice says from a green wax disk. The speaker then
goes on to recite a portion of Hamlet’s soliloquy.
Researchers were also able to hear a man announce the date of the
recording, “It’s the eleventh day of March,
eighteen hundred and eighty five,” he said.

Later on, a man’s voice is heard
saying, “Mary had a little lamb and its fleece was white
as snow . . . Everywhere that Mary went — oh
no!”

A second recording, this one on a copper
negative disc, hears someone trilling their tongue, and then
reciting the numbers, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.”

A third recording was not as well rehearsed as
the others, as it appears to have caught Bell’s
disappointment when he realized that his recording device hit a
technical glitch.

In total, it took about 10 years and
approximately $1 million to create this technology. Now that it
works, it’s believed that the Smithsonian’s
collection of approximately 400 early recordings (including the
200-or-so from Bell’s lab) will become a key resource for
new research on communications and early technology.■